The 2013 100 best corporate citizens list was published by Corporate Responsibility(CR) magazine which has a vision to “become the definitive source of global forums, media and summits on corporate sourcing and responsibility.” Their mission statement is to “provide senior executives with unparalleled learning, meeting, and networking experiences on corporate responsibility, human resources and financial management.” 2013 marks the fourteenth edition of this annual list.

The 100 Best Corporate Citizens List starting point is the “current corporate universe for all CR Magazine corporate citizenship lists [which] is [the] Russell 1000 companies.” They then use 298 data points of disclosure which can be categorized into seven grouping: environment, climate change, employee relations, human rights, governance, finance and philanthropy. Based on this methodology, the top ten of the 2013 100 Best Corporate Citizens list according to CR magazine are:

AT&T, Inc. – Weighted average score: 48.42

Mattel, Inc. – Weighted average score: 54.985

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. – Weighted average score: 56.93

Eaton Corp. – Weighted average score: 59.485

Intel Corp – Weighted average score: 61.05

Gap, Inc. – Weighted average score: 70.89

Hasbro, Inc. – Weighted average score: 71.89

Merck & Co., Inc. – Weighted average score: 72.985

Campbell Soup Co. – Weighted average score: 73.035

Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. – Weighted average score: 73.2

Elliot Clark, CEO of CR Magazine says of this list that, “Each year we are pleased to witness the growing commitment by corporations in an effort to improve their performance.” This is supported by the fact that there are 26 companies on the 2013 list that didn’t appear in the 2012 edition. This illustrates that as consumers place a higher priority on sustainability and transparency companies are rising to the occasion.

This list doesn’t just celebrate the new comers into the fold but also the 11 companies who have made the top 100 every year since 2007. Also those who were on the list previously tended to do better this year as “32 companies rose in ranking in 2013 an average of 20 ranks;” which only further demonstrates the impact of this list.

When a credible media outlet publishes a ranking such as this one, it serves to inspire and motivate companies to improve how they do what they do and also provides a benchmark by which to measure their efforts and how they compare to their competitors. Congrats to all the companies that made the list!